The Redemptive Arc

It’s the holiday season, which means it’s time to talk about my three favorite elves: Shame, Guilt, and Ho-Ho-Hope.

Those of you who follow this blog daily probably have gathered already that I’m going to follow up on two recent thought-provoking posts, one by Tom Bentley (“Shatter Your Characters”) on using shame and guilt to deepen characterization, the other by Donald Maass (“The Current”) on the implicit presence of hope running through all great stories. (If you missed either of these posts, I enthusiastically urge you to go to the links and check them out.)

What I will try to add to these two discussions is a technique for dramatizing shame and guilt in such a way that they provide not just elements of character, but generate an impetus toward positive action in the hope of some redemptive conclusion—a decisive act that seeks to remove the stigma of shame or guilt that is haunting the character’s life.

To do that, let’s revisit shame and guilt, and try to define them a bit more suitably for the purposes of writing dramatic fiction—by which I mean try to think about them in ways conducive to generating action, not just a sense of sin or self-loathing (two telltale reminders that Santa is, indeed, making a list).

Tom, quoting from a TED talk by Brené Brown, gave excellent working definitions of guilt and shame as they are commonly understood:

Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior.

Shame is, “I am bad.” Guilt is, “I did something bad.”

Guilt permits a person to make amends. Shame, in this definition, does not. The person with a deep sense of shame is condemned to a prison of self-contempt from which there is seemingly no escape (which is why it correlates so strongly with addictive and other self-destructive behaviors).

This immediately raises a question: What does shame accomplish in characterization if it just means my character is stuck?

It’s for this reason that I’m not entirely comfortable with this definition of shame (though it seems to rule the field at the moment in the behavioral sciences).

It’s here that I’d like to offer a brief but hopefully illuminative digression.

A Brief History of Shame Versus Guilt

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote a seminal paper on the topic of shame vs. guilt during World War II, when she was commissioned to write a report on Japanese culture for the benefit of decision makers needing to “understand the enemy.”

Benedict created the terms “shame culture” and “guilt culture” to distinguish Japan from Western European countries in the way social prohibitions are enforced.

Generally speaking, shame focused on the disapproval of others, where guilt focused on violation of a moral code.

Generally speaking, shame focused on the disapproval of others, where guilt focused on violation of a moral code.

Benedict argued that guilt emerged from shame in the individual (and in cultural evolution), in much the same Greek literature progressed from heroic epic to tragedy.

In the Homeric epics the world is chaotic, with life at the whim of the gods. The best one can hope for is to earn honor or glory before death. The great Homeric hero is Achilles who, given the choice to go home and live a long, peaceful life, or earn glory through combat, even with the foreknowledge he will die on the battlefield, Achilles chooses honor and heroic glory. (Shame cultures are also referred to as honor cultures, or honor/shame cultures.)

In contrast, Athenian drama, even when telling the same story, reveals a movement away from chaos and fate (and honor and shame) toward individual agency and responsibility. One sees a gradual progression from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides, where characters are portrayed less as victims of fate and more as actors responding to circumstances.

A century later, in his Poetics, Aristotle formalized this sense of individual agency and responsibility in the concept of hamartia, often translated (inadequately) as tragic fault or flaw. In actuality, hamartia meant precisely to act in defiance of fate, whether through error, misjudgment, or personal fault.

In other words, Greek culture (and all of Western culture with it, since the one emerged from the other), in order to enforce social and political norms, evolved from a reliance on shame to a reliance on guilt. Guilt was therefore seen as more advanced, mature—a conception that would survive all the way to Freud.

You can imagine how the Japanese responded to this. (Pretty much the way citizens of the Old South would have, for Dixie is the personification par excellence of an American honor/shame culture.)

Dixie is the personification par excellence of an American honor/shame culture.

Considerable debate ensued, and it’s unclear that final results are in. As Tom noted in his post, guilt and shame cover a lot of the same ground, and it’s not always simple to distinguish one from the other.

Even as great a thinker as Cicero, in developing his concept of natural law, defined what distinguished right from wrong in terms of what was honorable or disgraceful. But honor and disgrace would seem to be related more to shame than guilt. How do we escape this circularity?

Psychoanalysis and developmental cognition theory eventually came up with a new way to define and distinguish the two. Paraphrasing:

The development of shame precedes the development of guilt and is in fact one of its important precursors. Shame begins early in infancy during the phase of bonding with the mother or primary caregiver. The anxiety associated with shame arises from fear of separation from or loss of the loving parent. Guilt develops later, after a sense of a unique personality (and thus individual responsibility) has emerged. The unconscious threat in guilt is not abandonment but punishment and retribution.

It becomes a bit clearer, now, why shame and guilt are sometimes hard to separate. Guilt emerges from shame, with internalized fear of doing something that will cause the loved one to disapprove—or disappear—underpinning apprehension of being punished for doing something wrong (which may also produce loss of love or abandonment).

They’re not apples and oranges. They’re cocoon and caterpillar.

Returning to Drama

But for the purposes of dramatization, it’s useful to look at who the character fears will react negatively to whatever they’ve done, and what form that reaction will take.

In shame, I fear being shunned by those I look to for support, respect, and love.

In shame, I fear being shunned by those I look to for support, respect, and love. It may be as little a thing as attending a cocktail party with my fly down, or as big a thing as being unfaithful to my spouse, or plagiarizing my doctoral dissertation (and other forms of “cheating”).

People will look at me differently, my status will decrease, I will lose friends and loved ones, and those I don’t lose will respect me less. It’s only when this shame is internalized that it creates a sense of diminished self-worth or self-loathing.

In guilt, I fear being punished for something that violates a moral code.

In guilt, I fear being punished for something that violates a moral code. I haven’t just done something humiliating; I’ve done something wrong. I can atone, make restitution, “take my medicine,” etc.

Doing something wrong, of course, can also elicit shame—remember, shame is a kind of foundation for guilt. I may be shunned or even abandoned by the community or my loved ones because of the wrong I’ve committed.

Consider the expression “I can forgive but not forget.” What it really means is: “I may have stopped hating you but I’ll never trust you again.” As forgiveness goes, it’s pretty thin gruel. Why? Maybe the guilt is gone, but the shame remains. And shame is very, very hard to overcome. As an old Irish saying goes: “Better the trouble that follows death than the trouble that follows shame.”

Now, just like shame, guilt can be internalized. This often takes the form of a damning conscience. But that conscience has a voice, and that voice, however vaguely, has a face–which is why deeply internalized guilt often also feels like shame. We sense, if only through the personification of our conscience, as though we have been diminished in someone else’s eyes. That shame will be lesser or greater to the extent our conscience is the voice of a unique, conscious, self-generated moral code — our Better Self — or the voice of the family or community.

Internalization of shame and guilt is an inescapable part of our natures, but internal states don’t help me dramatize much. They can help me explore the inner life of my characters—how they feel about themselves, how they view and value their lives—but it doesn’t necessarily point toward any kind of action. People can stew in their shame and guilt. Many do (raise your hands). That doesn’t give us much to dramatize, though.

Drama requires two key components: desire, and other people. The desire is to reverse the damage, fueled by the hope this is possible. So if I’m going to use shame or guilt in my characterization, it’s useful to see what desire they create, and who can gratify that desire.

Drama requires two key components: desire, and other people.

Since shame involves how other people view us, and a decrease in status given what we’ve done, what we want when we experience shame is to regain the respect (and love) of those whose opinion matters to us.

In particular (for the sake of dramatic simplicity if nothing else), if what we did shamed us in front of one specific person we value above all others, it’s that person’s respect and love we hope to regain.

And so the action of the story will be motivated by this pursuit to regain lost love and respect—the character will do whatever she can to convince this key other character(s) that she is worthy of being once again thought of sympathetically, returned to the fold.

Guilt is a little trickier, since one cannot seek a response from a moral code. Instead, in questions of guilt, it’s beneficial to ask: Who was harmed through the wrongdoing? Once this is clear, the desire clarifies as well: We want to be forgiven by the person(s) we harmed. (We may also seek to be absolved by whatever authority ruled against us, but that’s a little more abstract.)

To word it in terms that both simplify the dramatic action and amplify the stakes:

Shame creates a desire to regain the respect of the one person whose opinion matters the most, given what happened. (The more that respect also includes love, the better.)

Guilt creates a desire to obtain the forgiveness of the person harmed through the wrongful act.

Both of these ambitions are motivated by hope—hope that regaining respect or being forgiven is possible. Otherwise your character is back to stewing in his shame or guilt, which is a particularly tortured form of navel-gazing. Don’t deny your characters their anguish, but use that as motivation, not a state of negative self-absorption.

Don’t deny your characters their anguish, but use that as motivation, not a state of negative self-absorption.

The hope for redemption may not exist or reveal itself until something happens in your story, a triggering event or revelation that suggests that the possibility for overcoming the past exists. Maybe that triggering event or revelation takes place before the story begins. One way or another, without it your character is stuck.

Conflict is created by the simple fact that you cannot earn someone else’s respect or forgiveness, any more than you can make them love you. You can do everything in your power to try to convince them, but the ultimate decision is theirs.

Respect, forgiveness, love, God’s grace—these are gifts, not rewards. We may be able to prove to ourselves we deserve them, but that’s really not the issue. We want something from another person we can only request, not demand–which is what makes the desires generated by shame and guilt so powerful in drama.

Respect, forgiveness, love, God’s grace—these are gifts, not rewards.

What happens when your character finds he isn’t earning the respect or forgiveness he so deeply craves? Hopefully (that word again), he tries harder, or tries something else, rethinks the issue, reconsiders his goal, looks deeper into himself (which is where internalized shame or guilt, a lack of self-worth or a barking conscience, come in). If fortunate, he’ll succeed through failure, i.e., figure out what will work by examining what doesn’t.

But this has a risk—your character can test the patience and goodwill of the person whose respect or forgiveness is sought. Few things in life are more aggravating than being hounded for a favor.

It may be that your character fails in his pursuit, and comes to some deeper realization about himself or those whose respect, love, or forgiveness he seeks, and this is the story’s takeaway.

His failure may be because the person with the power to offer respect, love, or forgiveness refuses or cannot do so (because she’s dead, for example).

Alternatively, it can be because the character who’s ashamed or guilty never properly comes to understand what is necessary to make things right.

An example of the former instance is Jackson Brodie, Kate Atkinson’s series protagonist. He feels guilty for something he didn’t do–his sister was murdered when their brother stayed home to watch TV rather than go out in the rain and pick her up at the bus stop. The brother subsequently killed himself. Jackson feels these losses as any Catholic would–as a stain on his own soul, a kind of original sin. He constantly strives to atone, normally by helping women in desperate need or peril, but forgiveness never comes, ironically because he did nothing wrong. (This Sisyphean futility at achieving forgiveness or justice — existential guilt — is a common motif in detective stories. The “will to justice,” though gratified partially with the solution of each book’s crime, is never totally appeased — very useful for a series hero.)

When forgiveness is withheld in this way, the reader will want to feel as though respect or forgiveness is deserved, even if not forthcoming. (The character, to some degree, has earned the right to respect or forgive himself, or earns the respect or forgiveness of another character whose opinion has been shown to be of value in the story.)

When the character’s lack of understanding is at issue, the reader will want to know the character will come to realize what was necessary, just too late (tragedy); or is simply too beholden to false ideas to have ever had any real chance (black comedy).

In this instance, the moral revelation will be the reader’s to take away, not the character’s. (For an example of this technique, see Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Parker’s Back”–Parker’s wife despises his tattoos, believing they’re Satanic. He tries to return to her good graces by showing his devotion to Christ–through getting a tattoo of the crucifixion on his back. His wife, needless to say, remains unmoved.

Tom was absolutely right that using shame and guilt to shatter the lives of your characters provides an extremely powerful way to make them human. But to avoid simply having them lying there in pieces, the shame or guilt needs to generate a desire for respect or forgiveness, motivated by the hope that, somehow, putting the pieces back together isn’t pointless.

And it ain’t just Christmas spirit that makes me believe that.

How are you using shame or guilt to deepen the characterization of your main character? How profoundly has the character’s life been shattered by what happened? What desire has this shame or guilt motivated? What other character holds the key to regaining respect or obtaining forgiveness? What reasonable hope does the ashamed or guilty character have for redemption? What has happened in the story to awaken that hope? What does he do to regain respect or obtain forgiveness? How does he fail, and why? Why does he ultimately succeed (or not)?

David Corbett is the author of six novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime, Blood of Paradise, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, and The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories, and his non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest (where he is a contributing editor). He has taught through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character, and Writer’s Digest will publish his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.

Me, too, Dave (see Carol above)! But on my first read, you’ve already cracked open something about one of my characters that’s been bugging me for a while. As an Atkinson fan, a Jackson Brodie groupie, and a recovering Catholic, I loved what you said about Brodie’s existential guilt. I have a character who has taken on shame for something beyond her control, and it has colored all her relationships. It’s the ‘beyond her control’ part that has real meaning for me. I understand her better now. Many thanks!!

If your character’s shame is beyond her control, find at least one character in the story whose respect or love can, at least partially, mitigate that feeling of low self-worth. Give her the hope, however unconscious or unformed, that some return to the human circle is possible.

Sometimes this requires looking into her past and finding her “golden moment,” the scene where she enjoyed genuine pride in a well-earned success. She’s hoping to once again feel that glow of pride, and feel worthy of others’ love.

Glad to know I’ve helped in some small way. That always means more to me than anything.

This is something I really needed to read this morning. I wasn’t thinking about my WIP’s protagonist, but rather one of the antagonists. One of my fears is that I’ve made him one-dimensional – a plain ol’ bad guy instead of a fully rounded, sympathetic character. So I’m exploring his backstory (not in my WIP, but in a separate document) and figuring out why he does the things he does, his overriding emotions, and when / why his more positive attributes would emerge. Reading this post on guilt and shame shed some light on what else drives this character besides anger and ambition. He did something terrible that compromised his relationship with his family, particularly his father – and now he’s compelled by shame to regain his father’s respect. I’ll have to check out Tom’s article now to read more on this.

Tom’s article is a must-read. It’s really wonderful, and inspired me to follow up with this.

You raise a great point: shame and guilt don’t just apply to protagonists. In fact, the kind of existential guilt, the kind that seemingly can never be escaped, is a great motivator for opponents. They have some deep shame that drives them to a perpetual state of I’ll Show You. This can be both positive and negative, obviously. Or both.

Wow – I’ll pipe up with the chorus, and say this essay is worthy of multiple rereads. It touches on so many of the issues in my WIP. My primary protagonist is cursed with unresolved shame (the redeemer, his father, dies in the opening scene). I love the cocoon and caterpillar metaphor! Both of my MCs then come to experience the pressure of guilt for violation of cultural moral codes (very much an honor/disgrace based culture). What I’m coming to realize is that they find resolution not through forgiveness (at least not in book one), but through their self-created cultural paradigm shift. The acceptance they need to do this they find in one another. (Sound like any politicians you know, creating their own set of rules and mores?) I’m still finding my way, and it leads to a boatload of unresolved issues (fodder for the series), but I’m hoping I can pull it off in a satisfying way for this first book’s arc.

Thanks for such a thorough exploration, David! As I said over on the WU group page, we are truly blessed by stellar contributors here!

David, thank you for exploring shame and guilt so thoroughly and for giving those wonderful examples showing character arc. Although I wrote a story about shame and guilt, it’s not until I read your words about regaining what is lost that I realized my MC’s dramatic arc. Oh, it’s there alright, but I couldn’t have explained the why properly until now. Thank you for helping me to understand my MC better, and to Tom for starting it in the first place.

It sounds to me like the storyteller in you instinctively understood the necessity of hope in the search for reconnection. This is indeed something I think most of us understand on some level — to the point I felt like I was belaboring the obvious a bit. But if in making this explicit I have, in whatever small way, helped in the next book, I’m grateful.

it’s at this point of our exercise I get to feel a wee bit ashamed myself. This post contains an error. This sentence is incorrect:

In actuality, hamartia meant precisely to act in defiance of fate, whether through error, misjudgment, or personal fault.

It’s hubris, not hamartia, that is defined by such an act in defiance of fate.

Hamartia is, indeed, often misunderstood, though not as carelessly as this (he admits sheepishly). Hamartia has come to mean “tragic flaw,” but for Aristotle it meant more an error of judgment, not necessarily rooted in a moral fault.

This is what I get for rushing through and not carefully proof-reading my own post.

Great post! Thank you. It strikes me that the shame/guilt paradigm is mirrored by another: honor/integrity. My writing has been plagued by difficulties that I think can be resolved by this realization. I am most interested to see if my characters can follow their paths to damnation or redemption based on their ability to achieve either public power (honor) or personal integrity. Eureka! (I hope.)

Integrity is indeed the sense of living up to one’s own moral code, one’s principles.

Note, however, that this also suggests the honorable/disgraceful dichotomy Cicero discusses.

One, we often inherit our principles from others, and by failing to live up to them, we shame ourselves before the people who nurtured our values (even if we only feel this internally).

This is perfectly fine. Like I said, guilt is rooted in shame. If I fail to live up to my own idea of who I should be, I fall into that trap Brené Brown describes, of feeling not just like I’ve done s bad thing, but I’m a bad person.

The problem here (as always) is the external and internal manifestations of shame and guilt. Drama requires externalization — meaning other people.

I think the key to distinguishing the degrees of guilt or shame in your protagonist will require focusing not on his internal state but what external act is required of him to maintain his integrity.

Ask yourself: who will be harmed if he fails to live up to his own principles. Why does he refuse to harm those people (when to do so will enhance his power)?

This, by the way, is a classic problem. Both Thucydides and Machiavelli maintained that rulers had to shed their sense of what is good. For rulers, the only good is gaining and maintaining power, period. To the extent their power guarantees order, there is also a positive good at issue, but that’s secondary.

My character, a macho detective, suffers shame and guilt not because of something specific he did to anyone but because he realizes that the unruly behaviors of his autistic child embarrass him. He loves the child dearly so the guilt runs deep. What he needs is to forgive himself. Your thoughtful post is causing me to think about his “redemption” in different ways, ways that could add depth to the novel’s resolution. Thanks!

Wow, great post, and Mary’s response mirrored my reaction—the idea of self-redemption. My protag can’t find relief from her own good works, from other characters, even from being bad/self-destructive, and I’d thought the only choice that she finally forgive herself. What David’s piece made me realize is that she’d taken on the guilt of others—that’s her self-realization. And then, finally, her relief. The reader has held that hope all along.

I suppose it raises the question: can a novel’s resolution of shame-guilt be entirely contained within self-redemption, a shared experience with the reader but not the outside “world”? It could risk turning into a tortous read!

An example of a book where self-redemption provides the narrative arc is The Red Badge of Courage.

Note, however, the degree to which the inner redemption requires a decisive external act: courage in battle.

In general, as you can probably guess from the gist of my post, I’m a firm believer in finding a way to anchor the character’s internal struggles in the external action of the story — i.e., other people. This allows you to weave the internal, external, and interpersonal conflicts together into one narrative thread, which gives the story unity.

Joe’s guilt arises from his failing to live up to his own moral code, personified in the man he expects himself to be. Since that code is personified in an idealized self, it has both elements of shame and guilt. His better self judges his real self, as it were.

His redemptive arc therefore won’t necessarily involve another person’s respect or forgiveness, as I’ve laid out here. It will instead require that he both forgive himself — recognize his fault is all too human — and to forge a closer bond with his son. His redemption won’t come from another person, since his shame and guilt are secrets, and thus internal. But you can externalize them through how he deals with the child witness in his case (see? I do remember), and how he transfers the greater understanding he achieves there to his interactions with his son.

As I recall, there is also Joe’s wife in the picture, and she makes him aware of his limitations as a father. She may serve as a character who can help Joe work through his secret shame and guilt, if he’ll let her. In fact, she may very well serve as a “conscience figure,” and it will be through resolving the tension in the marriage that Joe works through what he needs to understand and do to be a better father.

This is how to weave together the internal and interpersonal struggles of the character — and since the boy witness is also instrumental in Joe’s working out his problem, you’re also weaving the external struggle in as well. Great job.

Thanks so much, David! I’m thrilled that you remember. By coincidence – or serendipity – I’m working on revisions relying heavily on your earlier suggestions which I saved. Your reply here is extremely helpful and reassures me that I’m on the right track. You’re the best.

Thank you, David. You laid this out so clearly (in spite of the hamartia/hubris mix-up). I’ve been revising, searching for the right balance for a guilt-haunted protagonist. You pointed to the puzzle piece I was looking for – hope. Now that I have that piece, all the other pieces are falling into place. I needed that hope. Thank you.

Forget about my characters – this helped me figure out how I tick! It’s also useful when you are confronted by a character or real person who willfully refuses to explore what or why things have resulted in emotional distress or failure or why sometimes villains don’t recognize that what they have done is wrong or destructive and ultimately self destructive. Excellent piece, David. T

Just to be clear, shame and guilt having nothing whatsoever to do with my own life. Nope. Nope. Not a thing. This is all purely conjecural and hypothetical and I have to stop typing now because my nose keep growing and is pushing me away from the keyboard…

I saved this post for future rereading, so thank you very much! When I think about all the books I have loved in my life, it seems to me that they share this inner “code” of shame torment followed by the pursuit of redemption. And I wonder if the same is true of civilizations as a whole: collective emotions on a large scale, wreaking havoc or sometimes, if we’re very lucky, offering at least a temporary peace.

Great googlymooglies David—you took my first-leg baton on shame/guilt and ran it all the way to the finish line! Excellent, thought-provoking stuff here, and plumbing many depths where I was treading water.

This helps me a good deal with the novel I’m working on now, where the protagonist, a fundamentally good soul, trips over his own feet again and again in trying to woo his gal (and which tramples his work life as well). He’s about to have a spectacular flame-out that will seem to shut the door forever.

He is shamed by his behavior, and guilt-crippled by it rattling in his conscience. But in reading over your stuff here, I am going to alter my original redemptive lift of his Better Self, and have hope and forgiveness come from a glimmer barely seen at first. The turn toward forgiveness will come from outside the main story line, an act of grace, which you characterize nicely as a gift. (But his gift won’t be some kind of tawdry deus ex machina or similar tripe.) He will finally see how to make things right, though at some cost.

Thanks a lot, and now that I see you can move any idea of mine from sputtery match to Roman candle, I’ll just send you my novel as it stands, and you can write the rest of the story. You’ve got this shame/guilt thing down.

By the way, I love “Parker’s Back.” O’Connor was a genius. Thanks a lot, David.

I don’t deserve half the credit you’re giving me. Your post, combined with Don’s, really was the thing that put my mind in gear. And I’m not saying that just to get out of having to complete your novel (despite the fact is sounds really interesting).

I’m not sure love stories would exist without shame — especially comic ones. How many times, when we make an utter ass of ourselves, have we been comforted by, “Well, at least So-and-So loves me.” (So-and-So, by the way, is the name of my dog.)

David–
Your essay today is far too rich to be replied to with a simple pat on the back (“Wow! Gee! Awesome!”), or even with an extended comment. I commented on Tom Bentley’s post, making in rudimentary terms the distinctions related to shame and guilt you brilliantly analyze here. In the west (as you point out), shame is experienced in childhood, because the sources of social approval or disapproval are external–parents. If a child develops without too much mishap, those sources of praise and discipline are internalized, and become the conscience, the basis for guilt.
I will be studying today’s piece carefully, for reasons of self-interest: I am currently at work on a novel that’s flawed because I haven’t yet figured out how to externalize–that is, dramatize–the guilt that someone must come to terms with: the person who might offer my character forgiveness is dead.

I remember your comment to Tom’s post. That too was an impetus to write this one.

The need to obtain forgiveness from someone who has died is one of the classic conundrums — in life as well as fiction.

It’s somewhat related to the old argument — between Methodists and Presbyterians, for example — concerning the merit of good works. If grace cannot be earned, what is the point of acting virtuously? (What’s the point of trying to be forgiven by someone who’s not around to forgive you?)

But in the back of most people’s minds is the sneaky suspicion that good deeds at least earn us brownie points (aka karma) of some kind.

I imagine your protagonist will be in much the same spot. Knowing he cannot truly “earn” the forgiveness he craves, he will instead need to do something/help someone that demonstrates he “gets it” — he realizes he did something wrong and knows amends are warranted, and acts accordingly. He may not even recognize this until after the good deed is done. But his guilt has inspired/motivated him to do better.

You probably already have all that figured out, though, and you’re just wondering what exactly needs to be done to earn that redemption. When in doubt, an act of selfless courage, motivated by compassion, usually does the trick. On behalf of someone who, absent that act of courage, would suffer terribly. Of such stuff, heroes are made.

David–Like Barry, I very much appreciate the way you demonstrate externalizing/dramatizing the internal conflicts here. In theory I already “get it,” but sometimes find I’m keeping the protagonist’s struggle more in her head than out in her world. My intuition already knew that she couldn’t possibly resolve her conflicts just within herself, but–in part because she would *prefer* to fix things herself–it’s been easy to let her persuade me. ;-) Ha.

Today’s light bulb moment, for me, was thinking as I read this: my protagonist is afraid of being invisible. I knew she wanted respect, but suddenly that image of her wanting to be seen and acknowledged–not just professionally but on a more personal, fundamental level–began to click into what you’re saying about shame and guilt here. (Sidebar: I just finished Amanda Palmer’s book, which fits so nicely with the vulnerability of being seen…) And the “golden moment” you mention in the comments–that clicks too. Time to do do some more digging into her past…I needed those breadcrumbs to pick up the trail. Thank you!

There’s a line from a story by John Hawkes that has stayed with me for over 40 years: To be loved is to be seen. Very often, characters who are “invisible” have a secret terror of being found unworthy of love. As you note, being seen creates profound vulnerability: you can be judged. But absent that, we’re condemned to isolation and a kind of living death. At some point, a character who fears being invisible will have to make the leap, overcome their fear of being found lacking, and make their claim for dignity, worth, and love. And that is always a great story.

Thanks for probing the variables in guilt and shame. One of my POV characters is partially responsible for the abduction of his daughter. His guilt drives him to do everything in his power to find his child. And again, as he pursues his goal he yearns for forgiveness, for reconciliation with his wife and the universe. In such a state he finds himself re-examing his very role in the world. But as the story proceeds he does learn to HOPE.

Wow, Beth. That’s very powerful. Just imagining what such a father would feel like is almost overwhelming. Yeah, I’d call that a motivator. In a sense, gaining her freedom and safety becomes his absolution, his forgiveness, but it will never be total, since he can’t undo whatever his daughter has gone through or is going through at the hands of her abductor. His redemption will always be incomplete, but that’s probably the last thing on his mind!

The fact he learns to hope gets us back to Don’s post — the story would probably work okay if he simply acted out of guilt and fear. But as Don noted, without hope, fear fails to register as deeply as it should. His hope renders him even more vulnerable, allowing us to engage with him with greater empathy.

One question: isn’t it also possible that a character’s shame or guilt, rather than prompting the desires to gain respect/love/forgiveness, can prompt a desire to try to carry on as if nothing bad has happened? And that’s a different kind of conflict to show in the story: a character trying to pretend everything is OK when it, clearly, isn’t. The shame or guilt, of course, doesn’t go away either. And there can be plenty of dramatic action to show how the character is either hanging on to a past (before the shame or guilt inducing event occurred) or trying to move forward to a future that is shame-free or guilt-free.

Well, yes, denial is always an option. It tends not to be terribly useful in addressing the underlying problem, though. And though the character might be hanging on to a pre-problematic past, or hoping for a future in which the shame or guilt somehow magically disappear, I can’t help but think such an approach is somewhat delusional. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you mean, but in my experience, speaking both as a reader and a man with some wear on his tires, the only way to resolve guilt or shame is to face the root cause, not ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Am I missing something?

Yes, of course, denial is self-delusion. And, in real life, it doesn’t lead to anything but unhappiness. But, as a fiction plot device, in terms of creating conflict and drama for a character, it can certainly help move a story along because, in order to pretend that shame/guilt do not exist, the character will say or do things that make matters worse. That’s what I’m saying. Not all fiction leads to resolution or even has characters/protagonists interested in redemption, as satisfying as that may be for the reader. In fact, even in real life, I know people (sometimes, myself included) who would rather not do the hard work of trying to gain respect or forgiveness. Not saying it’s right or that it brings any kind of satisfaction. But that it is entirely possible in the realm of a character’s and story’s (un)development and can certainly make a story/character interesting.

I wholeheartedly agree that denial is a genuine human response, and a great many people refuse or fail to change. But unless the purpose is ironic or comic (and I’ll include black comedy here), I think most readers will tire of a character so relentlessly unaware. They’ll endure success through failure — where failure teaches the character how to succeed — but failure through failure will all too often begin to seem wearisome, especially if the reader sees what the character does not. Even tragedy requires an eventual recognition of what should have been done, though that recognition comes too late.

I’m thinking more of the short story form, perhaps, because that’s what I’m writing now. A novel has a much bigger arc or arcs, so, perhaps, the reader requires and deserves some kind of character resolution.

And, I’m not suggesting that the character is unaware — denial can happen despite awareness and recognition of what needs to happen. I’ve seen couples, friends, family members drift apart because of this even though they all know what should have been done. It’s not that there isn’t an understanding or a need for respect/forgiveness but that there’s a self-negation or self-denial driving the character’s actions and leading to more internal and external conflict. I’m blanking for examples right this minute but I’ve definitely read stories that involve characters without any real redemption in the end. I’ll have to think through and come back on the specific examples.

Hi, Jenny: I agree there are stories where there is no redemption or positive change. I read one over the summer by Simenon, A Stain on the Snow. I think most Americans would have trouble with the novel, but Europeans manage to rise above our need for a peppy ending. Kafka is another writer notoriously refusing to grant his characters anything resembling redemption. The story I cited by Flannery O’Connor, like much if not all of her work, focuses on human resistance to grace.

That said, conflict fueled by ignorance, especially willful ignorance, does grow tiresome. (I read the Simenon novel with the fascination of someone watching a slow motion train wreck.) If we didn’t feel empathy for poor Josef K we’d never be able to endure his fate, and that empathy is created by the character’s own attempt to grapple with his plight as honestly as he knows how.

So I agree with you, with the caveat that the plight of the unredeemed soul must speak to us of ourselves.

Late to the party today, but I love this post. It’s very relevant to my WIP. I found this especially useful:

“The shame or guilt needs to generate a desire for respect or forgiveness, motivated by the hope that, somehow, putting the pieces back together isn’t pointless.”

My MC is on a journey by foot across the state of Pennsylvania to seek forgiveness, taking it slow and making stops to revisit the sites of past events in order to piece together why he committed the unforgivable act in the first place.

What I hadn’t considered is that last part of what you wrote: “motivated by the hope that…putting the pieces back together isn’t pointless.” There are larger reasons to make the journey, larger even than making amends. Just what those are is well worth defining.

Grace derives from the Greek *charis*, Father John Hardon explains that to the Greeks the joy of grace wasn’t just a passive quality but was also “gracious or beautiful persons and things in operation, acting outside themselves to communicate to others what they possess within.”

I love that Father John Hardon quote. It is indeed very Greek — reminded me of Aristotle, actually, who believed man’s purpose was to act virtuously in pursuit of eudaimonia, which is often translated as “happiness” but actually means something more akin to “fulfillment.”

Glad to know the post helped with the WIP, which sounds very interesting. Atonement is a deep need, even when it doesn’t achieve the forgiveness we may have hoped for. Sometimes we need to do it just to prove to ourselves we’re worthy of being forgiven.

Wow, what an article, David. I’m going to have to reread this a few more times because guilt and shame are central to much of my fiction. I’ll also have to ponder the world of medicine, which is another shame-based culture. (They brag about shame-based teaching being a motivator.)

Have you read The Girl on the Train? (The top-selling book on Amazon for 2015.) It’s a whole treatise on a character grappling with external and internalized shame and guilt, and boy, does she push the Sisyphean existential guilt and failure-through-failure to the end of the line. It’s dark enough I’m surprised at how well the book did, while at the same time, it feels like an archetypal struggle. (38,000 reviews on Amazon with a 4-star average.)

I read The Girl on the Train. (I wondered why she wasn’t a Woman on the Train.) You’re right, it does deal with her struggle with shame – guilt. She was a drinker and was misused by her husband.
Another book that has a redemptive arc is The Kite Runner. The protag has to made amends in order to be good again.